At VMware Explore US 2022 this week, VMware has unveiled its multi-cloud management portfolio called VMware Aria. For controlling the cost, performance, configuration, and delivery of infrastructure and cloud-native applications, VMware Aria offers a number of end-to-end solutions.
Powering VMware Aria is VMware Aria Graph, a graph-based data store technology which captures the complexity of clients’ multi-cloud environments.
“With multi-cloud realities taking hold, managing overall cloud spend, resource utilization, and application performance, security and compliance across different clouds can be increasingly difficult, and consequently, can lead to overspending, inefficiencies, and increased risk. Developers need cost, performance, security, and configuration data – often sitting in disparate tools – to understand the complete characteristics of the application that they are building,” said Purnima Padmanabhan, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Management, VMware. “VMware Aria’s API-first approach enables developers, SREs and Platform Engineering teams to pull relevant, correlated data from any source for quicker application analysis and debugging, while providing complete visibility into the cost, performance, and configuration of applications and workloads across cloud environments for Platform Ops, IT Ops, and Cloud Ops teams.”
Introducing the New VMware Aria Family Name
VMware Aria is a brand-new, unified Cloud Management product. Customers of VMware’s multi-cloud management products, including Tanzu Observability by Wavefront, CloudHealth by VMware Suite, and VMware vRealize, would be eligible for the relevant VMware Aria service.
With VMware Aria, clients have access to a complete set of solutions through VMware Aria Cost, VMware Aria Operations, and VMware Aria Automation for reliable delivery and management of infrastructure and application services across any number of clouds.
In three categories – VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth, VMware Aria Operations, and VMware Aria Automation – VMware Aria offers new and extended capabilities for cloud native and multi-cloud management. The VMware Tanzu platform’s management of cloud-native app development, delivery, DevSecOps, and lifespan expands and supports VMware Aria.
The foundation of VMware Aria is the VMware Aria Hub, which offers centralized views and controls to manage the complete multi-cloud environment. VMware Aria Graph is used to define apps, resources, roles, and accounts in a consistent way.
VMware Aria Graph and VMware Aria Hub
VMware Aria Graph, a graph-based data store that encapsulates the resources and interactions of a multi-cloud environment, is the brains behind the new public cloud management features offered by VMware Aria. VMware Aria Graph offers a single source of truth that is updated in almost real-time and was specifically created for the operational requirements of cloud-native apps and environments. Other products on the market, mainly for asset monitoring and change management procedures, were developed in a slower-moving era. By comparison, VMware Aria Graph is developed particularly for cloud-native operations.
VMware Aria Graph would satisfy the most stringent enterprise multi-cloud management needs by utilizing a fundamentally new architecture to record many-to-many interactions, grow to hundreds of millions of items, and be updated in near-real time. VMware Aria’s graph data store and API services would enable it to seamlessly integrate with third-party solutions such as observability and application performance management tools.
Aria Graph would enrich operations, automation, and cost metrics in customers’ current VMware vRealize, CloudHealth by VMware, and VMware Tanzu Observability products, bringing application-aware management to private/hybrid clouds in addition to native public clouds. Data is collected and normalized from native public clouds, on-prem clouds, VMware tools, and third-party tools.
Customers will be able to access VMware Aria Graph as a feature within VMware Aria Hub. VMware Aria Hub, formerly dubbed Project Ensemble at VMworld 2021, offers consolidated views and controls to oversee the complete multi-cloud infrastructure.
To sum up, key capabilities of VMware Aria Graph would include the following:
- Highly scalable, supports cloud native environments – Reaches a node count of hundreds of millions; The many-to-many relationships required to fully comprehend interdependence are captured by graph data stores; Enables past configurations to be seen, which is important for root cause studies.
- Event-based collection, supports high rate of change – Captures change events whenever they happen; Catches all of the granularity.
- Federated and modular architecture, enables aggregation of data from any source – You may overlay data from outside tools using a plug-and-play technique; Enables teams to make better decisions and operate more effectively by aligning operational data on a single, comprehensive source of truth.
- Unified GraphQL API, simplifies consumption by both developers and ops teams – Creates a single, uniform, and developer-friendly interface to multi-cloud setups; Access to data is incredibly speedy and effective with precise GraphQL queries.
New End-to-End Solutions
Also announced at VMware Explore 2022 are a set of new end-to-end solutions that deliver cloud governance, cloud migration, and business insights at scale.
In today’s sophisticated, dispersed infrastructures, multi-cloud would pose fresh, challenging management issues. In order to provide distinctive value for multi-cloud governance, cross-cloud migration, and actionable business insights, VMware Aria offers features and functionalities that cut across management disciplines and clouds. On top of VMware Aria Hub and VMware Aria Graph, three new end-to-end management services have also been developed:
- VMware Aria Guardrails – Automate the scaling up of everything-as-code cloud security, networking, cost, performance, and configuration limits for multi-cloud setups.
- VMware Aria Migration – Accelerate and streamline the multi-cloud migration process by using VMware HCX to automate evaluation, planning, and execution.
- VMware Aria Business Insights – Using AI/ML analytics and full-stack event correlation, uncover pertinent business insights.
About the VMware Explore Event
VMware Explore is an evolution of the company’s flagship conference, VMworld. VMware Explore aims to be the industry’s go-to-event for all things multi-cloud. This year, it includes industry-led technical sessions and sessions on solutions, a large ecosystem with 90 percent of the company’s best cloud partners, a “thriving” market for multi-cloud ISVs, and a number of networking events.
